With the Relay for Life of Greater Fall River just 11 days away, we are closing in on the targets we set for that event. Our Walking with Jane Relay team is just under $1,600 of our $10,000 goal for that event, having nearly doubled already what we raised last year total. The event as a whole has more teams and participants than ever. The vast majority of the money the group raises will come in over the next two weeks, but we are ahead of where we were last year to this point.
June 22-23m we will see how much fruit the efforts of the teams and the planning committee will bear for the benefit of the American Cancer Society. My hair–I have told everyone I’ll go bald for a year if we top $500,000–seems safe for this year barring some huge donation from the outside world. But the possibility of me ending up in a large body of water in my tux–the deal if we go over $400,000–still seems realistically on the table. We’ll see what happens with both those bets the morning of June 23.
But as we come down the home stretch on that event, the serious work begins on four projects that will be of direct benefit to the fight against neuroendocrine and carcinoid tumors. After June 30, my full attention will return to funding the Walking with Jane Dybowski Fund for Neuroendocrine Cancer at Dana-Farber, September 9’s Jimmy Fund Marathon Walk, and the Cure Crawl. All those efforts will be part of the broader $3 Million March I wrote about a couple of weeks ago–our effort to double the funds raised for NET/CS research over the next 12 months.
We have a lot of ideas on the table for those efforts: a mini-golf tournament, a par 3 golf tournament, a motorcycle rally, a bike-a-thon, the Cure Crawl, a direct mail campaign, an email campaign, a door-to-door campaign, a craft fair, a series of public service announcements, an expansion of the Walking with Jane online store and improved marketing for it, a move to create teams to fundraise around marathons and other races, starting with the Marine Corps Marathon in October.
But right now, we have limited resources and we cannot do everything. So we have to set priorities. And the first priority needs to be to recruit more volunteers than we have now–a lot more. The truth is the small handful of things we are currently doing has the people we have now stretched out pretty close to their limits. The website alone keeps me occupied for two hours or more every day.
But this cancer is a nasty bit of business. For years, its victims have suffered from an anything but benign neglect. We are finally beginning to be able to shine some light into this particular dark corner. In order to keep that light shining, though, we are going to need all the help we can get.
Eventually, that is going to mean money. But before
we can worry about money, we need to find volunteers willing to organize and run events–large and small–that will not only raise money, but raise awareness as well.
We need you.
If you think you can help, drop us a line at walkingwithjane@gmail.com.
